Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, I think. I used to hate it, I’ll be honest . . . I never felt like I had a footing in life, and Thanksgiving was a big reminder of what I’d given up walking away from grad school and how much of a failure I felt like.

Well, it took some time, but I always knew leaving my doctoral program was not a mistake. And it wasn’t. The last few years, I have found it much easier to embrace what Thanksgiving was always meant to be about: gratitude for the multitude of blessings I have, no matter whether I feel like life is on the way up or I’m in a down phase. Gratitude for family. Gratitude for my health. Gratitude for life itself. Gratitude for the relationship I have developed with God, which keeps me going day in and day out in the midst of great societal collapse and uncertainty.

So today, I am grateful. And I pray that wherever you are, whatever you are doing, whatever your day looks like, you are able to find some peace and gratitude as well.